Time Person Of The Year: The Republican Party, Which Impeached Bill Clinton For Nothing, Then Gave Us This

Huffington Post
Brent Budowsky
Time Person Of The Year: The Republican Party, Which Impeached Bill Clinton For Nothing, Then Gave Us This

The President, with approval from Republicans in Congress, misrepresented intelligence to drive our country to war, with fear, while the Republicans in Congress, protecting him, covered up the report that would expose it.

The President, ignoring the advice of generals and demeaning those who courageously tried to warn us, with support and silence by the Republicans in Congress, approved a war plan that began with grotesque miscalculation, was
conducted with war on the cheap, used troops like the toy soldiers of ideologues. and risked their safety as the petty cash of their partisan politics.

The President, cheered by the throngs of the one party Republican Congress, instituted an Iraq Reconstruction with the Proconsul he named, staffed that Reconstruction with Republican campaign operatives, stiffed that Reconstruction with war profiteers of gargantuan greed, who stuffed their pockets with taxpayers money while our troops shed their blood in patriotism, and the Republican Congress shed their responsibility for oversight, one of the great derelictions of duty in history.

The President, under the spell of a Vice President who began this war as the Stone Age advocate for torture, and now advocates making catastrophe more catastrophic by intervening on one side of a civil war they say does not exist, with Republicans in Congress who tiptoed through the tulips straight through the eve of this destruction, are on the brink of doing more of the very failures that have taken us to this point.

The President, with White House counsels and Attorney Generals who were accessories to the crimes, with Republicans in Congress who stood supplicant and submissive while he publicly claimed he had the sole power to violate the Constitution, publicly claimed the sole power to violate laws he had signed, publicly claimed he was the sole determinant of whether he should faithfully execute the laws of the land, and publicly charged that those who opposed this were less than patriotic.

The Republican Leader Delay, with the smiling support of the President, with the leering smirk of the political aide who embodies the politics of retribution and dirt, with the full support of the Republican leaders of House and Senate who lead their party even today, instituted the greatest racketeering operation in the history of free nations, known as the K Street Project, engineered one of the great political scandals of our or any age, and huddle nervously today, fearing scales of justice that still await them.

The Republican White House, with the standing ovation of Republicans in Congress, hold secret meetings in their basement, with profiteers who dripped with oil, flowed with money, and gave so generously to their Party while they cheated our people, and made side deals with despots who funnel their money to terrorists, while they plan more attacks on our country.

The Republican President surrounded by war drunk ideologues obsessively planing to drive our country to more and greater wars, with the support of Republicans in Congress, refused to give our troops the armor, vehicles, bandages and helmets it was their duty to provide, then refused to give Democrats the opportunity for honest votes to set things right, then used war itself as a partisan instrument, with lies spread against heroes, who stood in opposition to catastrophe.

The Republican Speaker, the Republicans in Congress, the Republican President, stood united as one in coverup, even when sick and perverted crimes were committed against the young congressional pages, by the man who led the caucus designed to protect the children.

Our Republican President and Republican Speaker had their arms around each other in mutual support, even on these demented abuses.

This list could continue almost indefinitely, to make my point, but need not here, except for this: as the selection committee makes its decision for Time's person of the year there are rightful fears of future investigations, future revelations, future indictment, future conviction at every Republican level of the Republican Administration, Republicans in Congress, and Republican donors who gave dirty money to protect themselves in Republican Washington.

This is the party that impeached Bill Clinton for nothing?

My point is this: America may well be enduring what historicans will call the worst president in American history and the worst Vice President in American history.

America will continue to endure the war so arrogantly and incompetently planned by the man historians may well call the worst Secretary of Defense in American history.

America has had to endure the vacation-like schedule, massive corruptions and failures of duty of a Republican Congress that the historians may well conclude was the worst Congress in American history, a dishonor of some magnitude.

America has had to endure a corrupted politics and a Republican National Committee that ran racist and bigoted ads, with dirty money, from corrupted sources, who have hired armies of criminal lawyers and Washington firms that specialize in defending guilty clients, fearing catastrophic investigations.

If the Time Magazine Person of the Year should name the greatest influence on our country and our world, it is the Republican President, the Republican Vice President, the Republican White House political office, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Senate, the Republican House, the Republican donors, the Republican oil companies, the Republican profiteers in Iraq, the Republican White House counsels who said the wrongs were right, the Republican Attorney Generals who failed to stand up for faithfully executing the laws and for preserving, protecting and defending our Constitution.

What is so extraordinary, with results that are so catastrophic as witnessed every night on our evening news, is this: it was one political party that controlled every branch of our government, and sought permanent one party domination of our democracy, that abused one law and practice after another, that made the assassination of character an art form, and the demeaning of our democracy their mission, and they did it, in unison, together.

Who should be Time's Person of the Year?

The party that impeached Bill Clinton for nothing, and gave us this.